This page is a compendium of items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, damnable prevarications, rants and amusing anecdotes - about LAUSD and/or public education that didn't - or haven't yet - made it into the "real" 4LAKids blog and weekly e-newsletter at http://www.4LAKids.blogspot.com . 4LAKidsNews will be updated at arbitrary random intervals.

Friday, November 30, 2012

Themes in the News A weekly commentary written by UCLA IDEA on the important issues in education as covered by the news media Week of Nov. 26-30, 2012| http://bit.ly/RpWi1p

11-30-2012 :: The U.S. Department of Education released data on Monday that for the first time used a common measure allowing for state-by-state comparisons. Not surprisingly, in yet another national measure, California ranks in the bottom half of states.

But wait. We interrupt our grim-news reporting for a few rays of optimism. Some economic analysts are seeing the initial stages of California’s economic recovery (Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times). Along with the easing the overall economic crisis, a recovery could open significant benefits to k-12 education from Proposition 98. Then, too, voters did pass Prop 30. And California has a legislative super-majority that is of the same party as its education-friendly governor, which bodes well for coherent and decisive education support.

And now, back to the grim news that continues to underscore the damage that California’s inadequate and inequitable school funding has done to student learning, the economy, and social justice.

In the new national data, California ranked 32nd among states with a 76-percent graduation rate among a four-year cohort that graduated in 2010-11 (Sacramento Bee, EdSource Today). Iowa set the bar with an 88-percent graduation rate, while Nevada recorded 62 percent.

As was the case across the nation, California has graduation gaps between racial groups (Education Week). Asian and white student graduation rates were 89 percent and 85 percent whereas 70 percent of Latino students and 63 percent of African Americans graduated. Substantial gaps also exist between graduation rates in the state’s most affluent districts and those with the highest proportion of low-income students. Palo Alto and Palos Verdes Peninsula boast graduation rates of over 90 percent, while Oakland, Compton, and Lynwood have graduation rates below 60 percent.

The national data reveal that almost a quarter of California’s class of 2011 (or about 119,000 students) did not graduate in four years. A small number of these students eventually will earn a high school diploma or GED. But, the vast majority will not graduate from high school and be labeled dropouts. Fully addressing this challenge will require Herculean efforts, but initial and substantial improvements in the graduation rates can be made quickly if there is the public will.

There certainly are ample reasons for California’s public to address the state’s dropout problem. Dropouts are more likely to be unemployed than graduates, and they are more likely to be among the “working poor.” The California Dropout Research Project calculates that over two-thirds of high school dropouts are likely to use food stamps, and the probability of incarceration for a black male dropout is 60 percent. The Foundation for Educational Choice reported that dropouts earn an average of $8,000 to $16,000 less per year. Taken as a group, the California students who did not graduate in 2011 lost something on the order of $1 billion in potential earnings—a substantial annual loss for these young people, their communities, and the state’s tax base.

These new and comprehensive data from the Department of Education and other entities are important because they can “help states target support to ensure more students graduate on time, college and career ready,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan (Los Angeles Times). The California Dropout Research Project concurs, and also recommends examining requirements for graduation requirements, implementing reform strategies in middle schools, and investing in proven dropout prevention programs and strategies, particularly those targeting low-income and disadvantaged students. Districts should mobilize communities and partner with outside organizations, and schools should ensure that classroom learning connects to the real world so as to keep students engaged (CDRP).

November 30, 2012 12:02 PM :: LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — An attorney representing alleged child sex abuse victims from Miramonte Elementary School Friday called for a more thorough audit of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

KNX 1070′s Pete Demetriou reports the reaction comes after a state auditor criticized the district for failing to report 150 cases of teacher misconduct.

Attorney Brian Claypool said that while an audit released Thursday marked a step in the right direction, the district needs to determine a better method of handling abuse allegations after LAUSD officials failed to report cases of suspected child abuse to the credentialing commission.

The 62-page audit released Thursday found that of 604 cases of alleged abuse dating as far back as July 1, 2008, that were submitted for review over the course of three months, at least 144 were submitted after a year or more.

Thirty-one additional cases were submitted more than three years after they were initially reported, according to the audit.

In response to the findings, Claypool said the time for audits has passed.

“Unless there is criminal culpability on officials at LAUSD who are intentionally harboring suspected child predators, in our opinion, there will never be the type of change that we need within the LAUSD,” he said.

Claypool signaled his plans to forward the state auditor’s report along with letters from parents and other citizens calling for action to the District Attorney’s office and the FBI.

LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy, however, said the district has taken the necessary steps to address any deficiencies.

“We’ve put into place numerous policy changes and practice changes, including notification to parents, notification to state authorities,” said Deasy.

"This is a complex agreement and possibly the most sophisticated evaluation agreement that I have seen. It assures that test scores will not be overused, will not be assigned an arbitrary and inappropriate weight, will not be the sole or primary determinant of a teacher's evaluation."

-Diane Ravitch

Los Angeles Unified schools Supt. John Deasy, who has fought to use student test scores in teacher performance reviews since taking the district's helm nearly two years ago, said: "It is crystal clear that what we're doing is historic and very positive." (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

December 1, 2012 :: After months of tense negotiations, leaders of the Los Angeles Unified School District and its teachers union have tentatively agreed to use student test scores to evaluate instructors for the first time, officials announced Friday.

Under the breakthrough agreement, the nation's second-largest school district would join Chicago and a growing number of other cities in using test scores as one measure of how much teachers help their students progress academically in a year.

Alarm over low student performance, especially in impoverished and minority communities, has prompted the Obama administration and others to press school districts nationwide to craft better ways to identify struggling teachers for improvement.

The Los Angeles pact proposes to do that using a unique mix of individual and schoolwide testing data — including state standardized test scores, high school exit exams and district assessments, along with rates of attendance, graduation and suspensions.

But the tentative agreement leaves unanswered the most controversial question: how much to count student test scores in measuring teacher effectiveness. The school district and the union agreed only that the test scores would not be "sole, primary or controlling factors" in a teacher's final evaluation.

"It is crystal clear that what we're doing is historic and very positive," said L.A. Supt. John Deasy, who has fought to use student test scores in teacher performance reviews since taking the district's helm nearly two years ago. "This will help develop the skills of the teaching profession and hold us accountable for student achievement."

Members of United Teachers Los Angeles, however, still need to ratify the agreement. Many teachers have long opposed using test scores in their evaluations, saying test scores are unreliable measures of teacher ability.

The union characterized the agreement as a "limited" response to a Dec. 4 court-ordered deadline to show that test scores are being used in evaluations and said negotiations were continuing for future academic years. The deadline was imposed by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant, who ruled this year that state law requires L.A. Unified to use test scores in teacher performance reviews.

In a statement, the teachers union also emphasized that the agreement rejected the use of the district's method of measuring student academic progress for individual instructors. That measure, called Academic Growth Over Time, uses a mathematical formula to estimate how much a teacher helps students' performance, based on state test scores and controlling for such outside factors as income and race. Under the agreement, however, schoolwide scores using this method, also known as a value-added system, will be used.

For individual teachers, the agreement proposes to use raw state standardized test score data. Warren Fletcher, teachers union president, said that data give teachers more useful information about student performance on specific skills.

Critics of using test scores in teacher reviews praised Los Angeles' proposed new system, saying it uses a wide array of data to determine a teacher's effect on student learning.

Deasy said he will be developing guidelines for administrators on how to use the mix of data in teacher reviews and has said in the past that test scores should not count for more than 25% of the final rating.

"This is a complex agreement and possibly the most sophisticated evaluation agreement that I have seen," said Diane Ravitch, an educational historian and vocal critic of the use of test scores in teacher evaluations. "It assures that test scores will not be overused, will not be assigned an arbitrary and inappropriate weight, will not be the sole or primary determinant of a teacher's evaluation."

Teacher Brent Smiley at Lawrence Middle School in Chatsworth said: "I will vote yes. I have no doubt that my union leaders negotiated the best they could, given the adverse set of circumstances they faced."

He said it's notable that value-added measures and test scores have been accepted in some form by the teachers union.

"UTLA has moved beyond a strategy of just saying no to a strategy of trying to craft a useful agreement," said Kerchner, a professor at Claremont Graduate University.

The district is currently developing a new evaluation system that uses Academic Growth Over Time — along with a more rigorous classroom observation process, student and parent feedback and a teacher's contributions to the school community. The new observations were tested last year on a voluntary basis with about 450 teachers and 320 administrators; this year, every principal and one volunteer teacher at each of the district's 1,200 schools are expected to be trained.

The teachers union has filed an unfair labor charge against the district, arguing that the system is being unilaterally imposed without required negotiations.

Some teachers who have participated in the new observation process say it offers more specific guidance on how they can improve. Other educators — teachers and administrators alike — complain that it is too time-consuming.

The tentative agreement, acknowledging the extra time the new evaluations would take, would extend the time between evaluations from two to as long as five years for teachers with 10 or more years of experience.

Bill Lucia of EdVoice, the Sacramento-based educational advocacy group that brought the lawsuit, said he was "cautiously optimistic."

But he expressed dismay that the union did not reach agreement a few weeks earlier, which he said would have given L.A. Unified a shot at a $40-million federal grant. The district applied for the Race to the Top grant without the required teacher union support and was eliminated from the competition this week.

Negotiations over the tentative pact, however, nearly fell apart. Earlier this week, the union pulled away from the deal on the table, L.A. Unified officials said. And the district discussed holding a Monday emergency school-board meeting to craft a formal response to the court order in anticipation that no deal would be reached. The options included adopting an evaluation system without the union's consent.

Some members of the Board of Education, who also will need to approve the pact, praised the agreement for taking student growth and achievement into account but gauging this growth through multiple measures. Steve Zimmer said that, just as important, this milestone was achieved through negotiation.

School board President Monica Garcia praised the tentative deal as "absolutely, by all accounts, better than what we have today."

UTLA and LAUSD reach tentative agreement on evaluations

For the past several months, UTLA has been engaged in court-ordered bargaining with the District on evaluations. The court order found that, following state law (Stull Act), LAUSD must evaluate teacher performance as it reasonably relates to student progress toward state standards (as measured by CST scores) and toward District standards.

UTLA’s goals in negotiations were:

1. To reject any system (like the one supported by the Doe v. Deasy plaintiffs) that would label teachers with a simplistic, misleading individual VAM/AGT score to be used punitively in employment decisions.

2. To instead use multiple measures of student progress in a relevant way to improve instruction.

The agreement UTLA reached with LAUSD complies with the court order while rejecting the high-stakes use of individual AGT/VAM scores. Research shows that individual AGT/VAM scores are an extremely unstable and unreliable method for measuring instructional outcomes or evaluating teacher effectiveness. According to this agreement, a teacher’s individual AGT results cannot be used “to form the basis for any performance objective or be used in the final evaluation.”

Under this agreement, multiple measures of student progress will be added to the evaluation process. The focus is on using data formatively to identify areas of student need and to guide the teacher’s initial planning objectives. Some of these new student progress data factors can also be referenced in a limited way in the final evaluation process. But again, a teacher’s individual AGT results cannot be used in the final evaluation.

This agreement supplements the evaluation process. Article X of the current contract is retained in its entirety, and no current contractual rights or protections have been removed.

It’s important to know that if no agreement had been reached, the judge and/or LAUSD could have imposed a punitive VAM/AGT system of their own design. (LAUSD had originally wanted a system that required 30% of a teacher’s evaluation to be based solely on test scores as reflected in his or her individual AGT rating.) The District will report to the court on December 4 regarding the collectively bargained results of this TA.

HERE IS UTLA’s SUMMARY OF THE AGREEMENT:

TA on evaluations: Summary of key elements

No individual AGT/VAM in final evaluation: As specified in this agreement, a teacher’s individual AGT results cannot be used to form the basis for any performance objective or be used in the final evaluation (SECTION 1.3E).

UTLA—and many leading academics—continue to reject the use of individual teacher-level VAM scores for high-stakes personnel decisions. Individual VAM scores are not useful at the formative level, and research shows that they are an extremely unstable and unreliable method of measuring instructional outcomes or evaluating teacher effectiveness.

Multiple measures added: Multiple measures of student progress (see below) will be added to employees’ initial planning sheets as part of their performance objectives. The focus is on using data formatively to improve instruction by identifying areas of student need. Some of these new student progress data factors (but not individual AGT) can also be referenced in a limited way in the final evaluation process (SECTIONS 1.3 AND 2.0).

Planning sheets for 2012-13 would not need to be completely redone. Instead, a supplemental objective/strategy would be added (SECTIONS 1.0 AND 1.1).

The teacher and administrator will determine data sources: The multiple measures of student progress for the initial planning sheets will be determined by the administrator and the employee. These measures may include:

data such as a teacher’s past CST results (not AGT), current students’ previous CST results, and school-level CST/AGT data, and

None of these measures are to be treated as the “sole, primary or controlling” factors in determining the overall final evaluation (SECTION 2.0A).

Extended time between evaluations: For most employees with ten or more years of experience, LAUSD will immediately begin authorizing extensions of the period of time between evaluations from every second year to every third, fourth, or possibly fifth year (LAUSD will finally be taking advantage of these extensions, which have long been authorized by the Stull Act). (SECTION 1.2.)

Article X stays in place: The agreement is a supplement to the current Article X, and no current contractual rights or protections have been removed (SECTION 4.0).

This also means that employees can continue to grieve unsatisfactory evaluations.

Limited use of new factors in final evaluation: For the final evaluation, the new student progress data factors are to be an “important but clearly limited” part (not a fixed percentage). As the agreement states, the new data references are not to be treated as the “sole, primary or controlling factors” in determining any teacher’s final overall evaluation (SECTION 2.0A).

Teachers in non-CST/non-AGT assignments: For these employees, the new student progress evaluation factor will consist of other locally developed/approved assessments and measures of student progress, such as school-level AGT and student portfolios, semester/unit culminating activities, and curriculum-based examinations (SECTION 2.0C).

Employees in noninstructional assignments: Non-instructional, non-school-based employees, such as health and human services professionals, shall continue to be evaluated under Article X and are not covered by this supplemental agreement (SECTION 2.0D).

Oversight committee: A new joint UTLA-LAUSD committee (with an equal number of LAUSD and UTLA appointees) will oversee implementation of the agreement and assist schools in resolving disputes over the implementation (SECTION 5.0).

Negotiations continue: UTLA and LAUSD will continue negotiations concerning evaluation procedures. This agreement is a supplement to the current Article X to serve, along with the current Article X, in the interim until the conclusion of the continued negotiations concerningevaluation-related matters (SECTION 6.0).

Additional coverage as of 11/30 8pm

The Los Angeles public school teachers union reached a tentative agreement on Friday to allow student achievement metrics such as standardized test scores to factor in to teacher evaluations, making L.A. the latest district to embrace such methods.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles Unified School District on Friday reached an agreement with its teachers union to include students' state standardized test scores as a measure of teacher performance. The nation's second-largest district said the ...

29 November 2012 :: AALA thanks Gary Garcia, President of the Senior High School Principals’ Organization, for sharing this letter.

Dear Dr. Aquino:

Thank you for taking time out of your previously set schedule to meet with high school principals on Wednesday. The main topic of our discussion will be the various District initiatives that involve professional development.

Teaching and Learning Framework

English Language Learner Master Plan

Common Core Standards

In general, the concerns that principals in middle, secondary span and high schools from all parts of the District have shared with me apply to all three sets of the aforementioned professional development modules:

Modules have a bias toward the type of PD that is appropriate for elementary school faculties, not secondary.

The sheer number of PD modules that we are to provide to our staffs ignores the equally important mandate that all high schools also conduct WASC Self-Studies. This process usually takes a full year of meetings (at least 3 a month). Each school year, approximately 40% of high schools are preparing for either full or midterm visits from WASC teams.

The PD activities are designed for smaller groups of teachers than exist at most secondary schools.

The videos that are part of the PD modules seldom, if ever, have representatives from high schools.

The EL PD spends too much time teaching/informing teachers about how to counsel or program EL students into the various future program options they will have in 2013-2014. Secondary teachers at large schools do not program students or give advice to parents about program placement.

Because the PD modules are not suitable to deliver directly to high school faculties, administrators must spend valuable time revising the modules.

The school year started before the modules were completed. Due dates for when the modules should be delivered to teachers have changed repeatedly this semester. This makes school-site administrators look disorganized in the eyes of our staffs.

The concerns about the modules are exacerbated by an overall lack of resources that have been provided to school sites. The fact that we do not have enough custodians, counselors, clerks, teachers (class sizes in the 40s in many high schools), etc., makes full implementation of the myriad district mandates almost impossible. With the haphazard way the modules were rolled out this semester, many principals are wary of what we may see in the spring.

Statements from high school principals – copied verbatim

1. I would like to hear Jaime's response to this idea:

We can do a few things well or we can do many things poorly. We are not resourced to do many things well. We would rather do a few things well than do many things poorly. Currently, we are doing too many things poorly.

Why do we need three accountability systems? (Performance Meter If we are such good businessmen, why do we have pool teachers who earn full salaries wandering around the District? A prudent business model would be to assign these fully paid teachers to schools for the year so the school could include them in the master and lower class sizes.

Would he support a slower implementation timeline of common core [that is] balanced until such time that the resources to do it well and properly (on computers, not on paper) are made available, or would he support the current insanity that says full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes? I am weary of partial poor implementation of initiatives due to resource starvation, and I am sick of the injustice of holding hard working people accountable when there has been no accountability for those who have caused our current resource starvation policies, many of them self-imposed (Office of Civil Rights, Performance Meter, EGDC [the worst thing I have ever been exposed to in this profession], etc.).

2. My biggest concern is time. I understand the rationale for both the new evaluation system and the multiple PD initiatives. If we had a more expeditious system of entering data from our classroom visits, the new system would be more do-able. Even if you are fast with the technology, and I’m pretty good, the time it takes to categorize the script we took from the visit makes the process very difficult to manage. Maybe a tool which has categories already embedded and voice recognition software to enter the script/data. I’m thinking big, but I think this is the only way it can work. Like Siri goes to the classroom and helps administrators with teacher evals….

Along the same lines, the PD Modules are simply too many to adequately cover in 7-14 PD days. We were told that ½ of our days would go to District initiatives. If we had weekly PD, as in some schools, this would be more do-able. But we only have the 14 [days]. Realize that inside of our PD, we really do need to do other school-based training. We are having a full WASC visit in February. This takes time. We are developing the seeds of PLCs in our departments, looking at assessments, student results, and instruction. This takes time. We are continuing to offer PD by SLC and magnets including project-based learning/linked learning and other types of integrated instruction. We are also looking at My Data and other technology training. This also takes time. There is not enough of it. Even if we voted to hold weekly PD, our teachers would expect much of that time to be for PLC-type work, not most of it going to District initiatives.

3. I, too, am concerned about the short timeline to facilitate all these modules. If we are asking our teachers to use researched-based, successful strategies to address quality and rigor and to "go deeper," with our students, we need to model these strategies during our faculty PD while facilitating our teachers to raise awareness and understanding of the modules and their implementation. I am working on integrating these modules with what we are already doing well at our school so my teachers and staff do not feel as if the District is yet adding more to an overflowing plate. There is a way to do this integration right, but it's very difficult when the timeline is so set that there is no flexibility to meet each school's needs. I agree that we need to become more consistent across the District in how all school faculties and staffs are meeting the learning needs of our students, and I am benefiting from what we are learning in our principals' network in my ESC, but I would also ask that the input of school administrators be heard and considered as the District moves forward with its various implementations since we are the ones who have to figure out how to truly implement these initiatives in a manner that leads to student (and faculty) success at our school sites.

One question: Are there experienced high school APSCSs serving as part of the District-level discussion regarding the implementation of the more recent A-G diploma requirements as well as the various levels of intervention for at-risk students (for example for math)? The high school APSCSs can be valuable in looking at how these requirements impact the master schedule as well as in proposing positive solutions that could help all high schools. Just a thought.

4. Problems with the EL Master Plan book:

The writers of the book provide little differentiation for their widely varied audience. Instructions for some of the suggested strategies are directed toward all teachers, but many are unrealistic for high school subject matter teachers. (Example: Is a chemistry teacher or an art teacher supposed to learn and then teach contrastive grammatical analysis to SELs?) Further, the sample curriculum in Appendix C is primarily elementary school based (grades 2-5). Where is the material for high school teachers of various disciplines?

Some definitions/explanations of terms describing student background are presented as absolute, but the connotations carry multiple and often erroneously stereotyped implications. Case in point: The various definitions of SEL mix the “what” of the term with the “why,” suggesting, for example, students using vernacular English in certain situations learn this at home, the book defining SEL as “home language.”

Problem with Common Core Standards Initiative:

Using the term “instructional shifts” when referring to (a) teaching complex texts and (b) providing reading and writing grounded in evidence from the text, suggests that competent high school English teachers have not been doing that all along. That is an insult to high school teachers of English. That is how textual analysis—both reading and writing—is taught—whether it be based on literature or informational texts. Some recognition that this is not entirely new to everyone would help.

NOTE: Dr. Aquino verbally responded to these questions at the November 28 SHSPO meeting. We have asked him to provide a written response which will be published in the next issue of Update, if it is available. The Senior High School Principals’ Organization also sent a letter regarding facilities to Roger Finstad, Maintenance and Operations Director, which will be published next week.

A CONCERN FROM A UNIT J MEMBER

smf:Unit J are Classified Managers – also represented in collective bargaining by AALA. The argument below applies to many LAUSD staff who were moved from A Basis to other Bases – in other words: from full annual employment to reduced employment on a reduced calendar: A cut in days worked IS a cut in pay!

A Basis Change is a RIF.

Many other District employees (Elementary Librarians/”Library Aides” come to mind – though they are not unique) have been moved from full time to part time status – cutting their pay AND removing their benefits. If Prop 30 is returning money to the District it should be used to restore employees (who have made the sacrifice) and programs to their previous status BEFORE we start spending the money on something or someone else.

And again – this isn’t about employment – it is about services to students and support of the classroom!

Regarding the article: “RESTORATION OF THE FULL SCHOOL YEAR AND FURLOUGH DAYS - NOW WHAT?” I absolutely agree with your comments about funding, creative thinking and making every effort to help schools. But again, please think about the classified staff members who have also been negatively impacted by the budget cuts. Specifically, I am referring to basis changes.

Many staff were changed from A Basis and I have not heard any discussion about bringing that back. Once a cut has been made, it’s easy to forget the staff who were impacted, unless they speak up or have their union speak up for them. ITD used project managers as sacrificial lambs when the budget got tight a couple of years ago. Now we’re in our third year of B Basis (on top of all the furloughs during that time). These managers supervise staff who are A Basis as well as highly paid full-time contractors. Some, but not all, staff are able to get Z time but many managers scrutinize Z time requests and make the staff go find another unit to fund it. That is demeaning and demoralizing.

I brought this up in Ron Chandler’s All Hands meeting last week and afterwards my immediate supervisor suggested I bring it up with AALA. I shouldn’t have to go to AALA – the management should do the right thing and advocate for us. But maybe it does take the power of the union to mediate these inequities.

Can you help restore A Basis for Classified staff?

All AALA members may not be aware, but Unit J includes ITD project managers who work on projects that are requested and paid for by other divisions in the District. Some divisions, or large projects, have sufficient funding to pay for Z time; however, many project managers work on multiple smaller projects for various units that may not have any, or very little, funding. In addition, most project managers are responsible for employees who are on A Basis and therefore, working without supervision a portion of the year. Needless to say, the reduction to B Basis did not change the workload; project managers, like school administrators, are expected to accomplish the same amount of work in less time. AALA remains committed to improving the working conditions of its members and, therefore, urges the Superintendent and Board, as they develop budget priorities, to return all of our members, classified and certificated, to their previous bases.

During his short tenure as superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, John Deasy has been reprimanded by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing for failing to report the change of status of a teacher who was accused of sexually abusing students. He has exhibited unprofessional conduct by accosting a substitute teacher and engaging in a verbal confrontation in front of high school students at Washington Prep High School. In a Times article last April, one of his subordinates refused to provide a name when criticizing Deasy for fear of reprisal.

If Deasy has done anything, it is to instill a culture of fear in the district.

Victor Ramos

Mission Hills

Despite Jim Newton's glowing analysis of Deasy, I find only two statements that seem worth praise:

Deasy has "cut the district headquarters staff by 54% in two years." It's about time, but I'm sure there's still plenty of busy work going on there.

"Districtwide, scores on the Academic Performance Index, a state measure of student achievement, jumped 16 points last year." Don't the teachers, not Deasy, deserve credit for that?

Published Online: November 27, 2012 | Oklahoma City :: As a group of Oklahoma principals toured Millwood Arts Academy on a recent morning, they snapped photos of student work displayed in hallways, stepped briefly into classrooms, queried the school’s leader, and compared notes.

They were gathered here to observe firsthand a public magnet school that’s seen as a leading example of the educational approach espoused by the Oklahoma A+ Schools network, which has grown from 14 schools a decade ago to nearly 70 today.

A key ingredient, and perhaps the best-known feature, is the network’s strong emphasis on the arts, both in their own right and infused across the curriculum.

“I took a million pictures today and emailed them to all my teachers,” said Principal Leah J. Anderson of Gatewood Elementary School, also in Oklahoma City.

Ms. Anderson said she was struck by the diverse ways students demonstrate their learning, such as a visual representation of the food chain displayed in one hallway.

“It’s not just a page out of the textbook,” she said. “They created it themselves.”

The Oklahoma network has drawn national attention, including praise from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and mention in a 2011 arts education report from the President’s Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

The A+ approach was not born in Oklahoma, however. It was imported from North Carolina, which launched the first A+ network in 1995 and currently has 40 active member schools. It has since expanded not only to Oklahoma but also to Arkansas, which now counts about a dozen A+ schools. Advocates are gearing up to start a Louisiana network.

The networks are guided by eight core principles, or “essentials,” as they’re called, including a heavy dose of the arts, teacher collaboration, experiential learning, and exploration of “multiple intelligences” among students. At the same time, each state has some differences in emphasis.

A+: What’s Essential?

Schools participating in the A+ network in Oklahoma and other states commit to a set of eight A+ essentials.

ClimateTeachers “can manage the arts in their classrooms.” Stress is reduced. Teachers treated as professionals. Morale improves. Excitement about the program grows.

SOURCE: Oklahoma A+ Schools

Oklahoma’s network describes its mission as “nurturing creativity in every learner.”

The nearly 20 educators who toured Millwood Academy this month—part of a larger group attending a leadership retreat for the state network—covered the gamut from those brand new to the A+ approach to others with years of experience.

“The continual plea from people seeking to do things like this is, ‘Show me, demonstrate,’ ” said Jean Hendrickson, the executive director of Oklahoma A+ Schools, which is part of the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond.

“[This] is one of the handful of A+ schools we can count on to actively, any day of the week, demonstrate this model in action,” she said at Millwood. “What we want is for the others in our network to have their feet on the ground in a place like this.”

The network faces continual challenges, such as attracting sufficient state aid and coping with the inevitable turnover of school staff, which can strain the degree of fidelity to the A+ essentials.

This fall, 16 member schools in Oklahoma have new principals, more turnover than ever. Some of them lack prior experience with A+, including Consuela M. Franklin, who just took the reins at Owen Elementary School in Tulsa.

“I inherited an A+ school, and so my quest today is to actually learn more, the overall philosophy,” she said. “What it looks like. What it sounds like. How do you know it when you see it?”

Desire to Change

The Oklahoma A+ network has a diverse mix of schools in urban, suburban, and rural areas. Some serve predominantly low-income families. Most are public, though a few are private. And they include traditional public schools, as well as magnets and charters.

The network is supported by both public and private dollars, with all professional development and other supports free to participating schools. But state funding was cut back sharply during the recent economic downturn. An annual line item in the state budget for the network that at its height provided $670,000 was zeroed out in 2011. In the latest budget, it was restored, but only at $125,000.

Schools are drawn to A+ for diverse reasons, said Ms. Hendrickson, who was a principal for 17 years before becoming the network’s leader. But it all boils down to one thing: a desire to change.

“What they want to change ranges broadly,” she said. “It can be they want better test scores. It could be richer activity-based, project-based-learning ideas. It could be taking their success to the next level. It could be more arts.”

As part of the application process, a school must gain the support of 85 percent or more of its faculty members before a review by A+ staff and outside experts. The review is focused mainly on gauging the school’s commitment and capacity to effectively implement the A+ essentials.

The level of fidelity to the approach varies across schools, Ms. Hendrickson said, adding that even within the same school, it may shift over time. “Schools are not static places,” she said.

“Over time, [A+ schools] tend toward one end or the other of our engagement spectrum, whether the informational end, ‘Thank you, we got what we wanted,’ or the transformational end, where, ‘It drives what we do,’ ” she said. “So we have different levels of engagement and different categories of affiliation.”

One teacher at the A+ retreat confided that with a recent leadership switch at her school, the commitment level has declined.

“It’s not the same if you don’t have a leader who is completely active and passionate about it,” she said. “So it has changed, but we’re hanging in there.”

Gary Long, 8, leads his fellow 3rd graders in spoken word poetry, quotes and chants as principals from other area schools record video on their iPads during a tour of the Millwood Arts Academy in Oklahoma City, Okla. State education leaders recently toured to get a first-hand view of the school’s program that infuses arts across the curriculum. —Shane Bevel for Education Week>>

The tightest alignment comes with “demonstration schools.” Those schools, including Millwood Arts Academy, have “made a really strong commitment to the eight A+ essentials, and they are our best partners to help others see what it looks like,” said Ms. Hendrickson.

Millwood is a grades 3-8 magnet that primarily serves African-American students from low-income families. Unlike most Oklahoma A+ schools, it has selective admissions criteria. Admission decisions primarily are reflective of strong student interest in the arts and parents’ embrace of the school’s philosophy, said Christine Harrison, the principal of both that school and Millwood Freshman Academy, which is in the same building and is also an A+ school.

Speaking to her visitors this month, who saw classes for both academies, she sang the praises of the network: “A+ is our driving force.”

Ms. Harrison, who describes her schools as “dripping in the arts,” also emphasized the power of the other A+ essentials, including the intentional collaboration.

“We have teachers collaborating without me having to say ‘collaborate,’ ” she said. “You cannot be isolated in an A+ school.”

‘Shared Experience’

Following the trip to Millwood, the visiting educators spent time sharing ideas and exploring best practices. At one point, the principals sat down in small groups for an intensive, problem-solving exercise. Each leader identified a particular challenge and worked on strategies to cope.

“We provide ongoing professional development and networking opportunities, with a strong research eye on the methods we’re using, the outcomes we’re getting,” said Ms. Hendrickson.

Sandra L. Kent, the principal of Jane Phillips Elementary in Bartlesville, Okla., gives high marks to the professional development, especially the five-day workshop for schools first joining.

“We had a really powerful shared experience,” she said. “That’s one thing, as an A+ school, when you all go and live together for a week.”

Dance instructor Beth Eppler teaches her students how to solve math equations by counting their dance steps in a class at the Millwood Freshman Academy in Oklahoma City, Okla. Shane Bevel for Education Week>>

Ms. Kent said A+ is often misunderstood as being an “arts program.” The arts dimension gets significant attention “because not a lot of other people talk about it as being so important.” But other elements are also important, she said, such as the call for collaboration and the pursuit of multiple learning pathways that attend to students’ “multiple intelligences.”

Another ingredient is enriched assessment strategies that aim to better capture what students know and are able to do.

One aspect that has helped get A+ schools noticed is the research base.

“They have a very strong evaluation component,” said Sandra S. Ruppert, the executive director of the Washington-based Arts Education Partnership. “They have made the investments, documented their strategies. They can look at the correlation with test scores, but also a whole host of other outcomes. ... It is what gives that work greater credibility.”

Both the North Carolina and Oklahoma networks have been the subject of extensive study.

In 2010, Oklahoma A+ Schools issued a five-volume report on data collected by researchers from 2002 to 2007. It found that participating schools, on average, “consistently outperform their counterparts within their district and state on the [Oklahoma] Academic Performance Index,” a measure that relies heavily on student-achievement data.

The study also found other benefits, including better student attendance, decreased disciplinary problems, and more parent and community engagement. But it found the level of fidelity to the A+ essentials uneven, with those schools that adhered most closely seeing the strongest outcomes.

Meanwhile, a separate, more limited study in Oklahoma City compared achievement among students in A+ schools with a matched cohort of students. It found that, on average, students across the seven A+ schools “significantly outperformed” a comparable group of district peers in reading and math, based on 2005 test data. However, not all individual schools outperformed the average, and the study did not measure growth in student achievement over time.

Tapping Into Creativity

Amid growing interest in A+, neighboring Arkansas is ramping up its network, after stalling for a few years. Just recently, several charter schools in the high-profile KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) network signed on.

“People think KIPP: structure, discipline, rigor. Arts infusion? What the heck do they have in common?” said Scott A. Shirey, the executive director of KIPP Delta Public Schools, which runs schools in Helena and Blytheville, Ark. “But I think it was what we needed to bring our schools to the next level, ... to tap into the creativity of teachers and students.”

Mr. Shirey said he values the ongoing support in the A+ network.

“It’s not, ‘We’ll train you for one week, and you’re done,’ ” he said.

Back in Oklahoma, Ms. Kent, the elementary principal, welcomed the fall leadership retreat as a way to get “refreshed and renewed and refocused.”

She said it can be tough to maintain support for an arts-infused approach as schools face the pressure for improved test scores and other demands. In Oklahoma, recent changes include a new teacher-evaluation system, new letter grades for schools, the advent of the Common Core State Standards, and a new 3rd grade retention policy for struggling readers.

“Yes, it’s very difficult with the policy changes to get other people to trust you and trust the [A+] process,” said Ms. Kent, who previously led another A+ school. Her current school is in its second year of transitioning to the A+ essentials. “Until you really produce the results, people have a hard time going there,” she said.

But Ms. Kent said she’s convinced her school’s journey as part of the network will serve students well.

Schools can’t escape the push for strong test scores, said Ms. Harrison from Millwood Arts Academy. “Let’s face it, that’s a big part of how we’re graded,” she told the visiting educators. “But the A+ Schools way helps you look good on that paper.”

The tour of Millwood was eye-opening for Ms. Franklin, the new principal at Owen Elementary, who came away impressed by this example of A+ in action. She said “evidence was everywhere” of student engagement and learning.

“It was colorful, it was lively, it was audible,” she said. “I am motivated to take it back to my school.”

Coverage of leadership, expanded learning time, and arts learning is supported in part by a grant from The Wallace Foundation, at www.wallacefoundation.org.

Students are escorted to a waiting bus as they leave Miramonte Elementary school after classes Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012 in Los Angeles. Veteran Miramonte Elementary school teacher Mark Berndt, 61, was arrested Monday, Jan. 30, on charges of lewd conduct with 23 children after a film processor gave police photos showing blindfolded children with their mouths taped and cockroaches on their faces. Berndt remained jailed Tuesday on $2.3 million bail. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

11/29/2012 08:16:50 PM PST Updated: 11/29/2012 09:27:29 PM PST :: Systematic problems within Los Angeles Unified resulted in its failure to report teacher misconduct to the state credentialing agency and costly delays in investigating and disciplining abusive teachers, according to a state audit released Thursday.

Triggered by the Miramonte sex-abuse scandal, the eight-month review by state Auditor Elaine Howle identified serious lapses in LAUSD procedures, and makes four recommendations for improvement.

Superintendent John Deasy said the district already has addressed most of the deficiencies outlined in the 57-page report.

"The audit captured accurately what the district has done in terms of improvement and where the district was," he said.

The audit was ordered in March by the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, after allegations that LAUSD had mishandled sexual-abuse cases involving teachers at Miramonte Elementary in South L.A. and Telfair Elementary in Pacoima.

Auditors visited those two campuses and four others as part of their review. They also interviewed district and state officials and pored through records, including the 600 personnel files sent to the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

They found that the district had failed to alert the CTC that it had disciplined or fired 144 teachers, some for misconduct involving students. Of those cases, 31 were more than 3 years old, which officials said made it impossible to determine whether to revoke the teachers' credentials and prevent them from working in other districts.

AUDITOR RECOMMENDATIONS

The California State Auditor issued four recommendations as part of an eight-month review of Los Angeles Unified's handling of child-abuse allegations:

• LAUSD should comply with state requirements for submitting cases to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, including the timely reporting of teachers who retire, are fired or who are suspended or placed on unpaid leave for more than 10 days. The district should refrain from filing cases before they meet reporting guidelines.

• The Legislature should create a system for tracking misconduct cases involving classified employees such as clerical, janitorial or cafeteria workers, to ensure they are not hired by other districts.

• LAUSD should increase its oversight in investigating and disciplining misconduct cases to prevent unnecessary delays.

While the average stay for a housed teacher is six months, auditors found instances where investigations stalled for months at a time. The report cites one case in which there was an eight-month delay in disciplining a teacher because the principal had trouble writing up the supporting memo.

Auditors also reviewed district records and found that 111 teachers and administrators were housed in 2011-12 for an average of 200 working days, collecting more than $4.2 million in wages.

The Daily News reported Wednesday that about 300 educators are now being housed, including 54 who are on unpaid leave. The remaining teachers are collecting an estimated $1.4 million a month in salary while district and law-enforcement investigations proceed.

Late Thursday, LAUSD officials released figures showing the district paid nearly $11 million in salary and benefits in 2011-12 to substitute teachers covering for housed employees. The costs top $5.7 million for the current fiscal year that began July 1.

The report found that because the process of firing a teacher can take years and be expensive - Deasy estimated $300,000 - the district may be more likely to pay an employee to retire instead of pursuing dismissal.

Of 61 settlements reviewed by auditors, 47 involved misconduct with a student, with payouts totaling more than $2 million.

Nevertheless, district officials say they fired 92 teachers last year for inappropriate conduct and six during the current school year.

Deasy said the school board will be advocating efforts to change state law to make it easier to fire teachers, especially in cases of sexual misconduct. A teacher dismissal bill by state Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima, was defeated earlier this year.

In a phone interview from Sacramento, Padilla said he hoped to re-introduce the bill during the upcoming session, adding that the state report reaffirms the need for an expedited dismissal process.

"This is what we've been hearing from districts throughout the state - not just Los Angeles Unified," he said. "It adds weight and urgency to our argument."

Warren Fletcher, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, said the union concurs with Los Angeles Unified's goal of keeping students safe but believes the district has over-reacted in response to Miramonte.

"The pendulum swings between reporting nothing and reporting and suspecting everything. There is a middle ground," he said.

"We have to be serious about how we investigate and what we investigate ... It's more important to be vigilant than to look vigilant."

State Assemblyman Ricardo Lara, the South Gate Democrat who requested the audit, said the first-of-its-kind report provided "a good snapshot of what needed to be improved and how."

He said he plans to create a working group of district and law enforcement officials to discuss ways to improve the investigatory process.

He also wants to work on legislation to address the audit's recommendation for a statewide tracking system of dismissed support staff, like custodians and clerical workers, to prevent them from being rehired by other districts.

He's already been in contact with school board President Monica Garcia, who said the district has learned from the Miramonte crisis.

"Where we are weak, we have to strengthen it," Garcia said. "We have to do what we said we're going to do and check what we say we're going to check.

"There have been difficult situations that have been met with a strong focused response," she added. "There are issues that we have to continue working on. We have to keep moving forward."

November 30th, 2012 :: California teachers who lose their jobs for misconduct against students lose their licenses to teach, but the state has no similar process for the other 289,000 school employees who are fired or forced to resign due to child abuse. There’s no mechanism for sharing the information on “classified” employees; as a result, other districts and childcare centers may hire a new bus driver, classroom or special education aide or cafeteria worker without knowing why the person left their last job.

This disquieting revelation about abuse by school employees who aren’t teachers was disclosed yesterday within the 68-page report from the State Auditor highly critical of Los Angeles Unified School District over how it mishandled years of sex abuse cases involving teachers.

The audit was triggered by the sensational story that surfaced earlier this year over the district’s failure to take action against two male teachers at Miramonte Elementary School, despite suspicions that they were sexually abusing students. In the case of 5th grade teacher Mark Brendt, who’s facing 23 counts of lewd conduct, suspicions of misconduct had been around for years.In the wake of his arrest, and other cases, the Joint Legislative Audit Committee asked the State Auditor to investigate how LAUSD handled allegations of employee abuse against students.

Auditor’s 4 recommendations

To ensure that the commission is made aware of certificated employees who need to be reviewed to determine whether the employees’ teaching credentials should be suspended or revoked, the district should adhere to state requirements for reporting cases to the commission.

The Legislature should consider establishing a mechanism to monitor classified employees who have separated from a school district by dismissal, resignation, or settlement during the course of an investigation for misconduct involving students, similar to the oversight provided by the commission for certificated employees. If such a mechanism existed, school districts throughout the State could be notified before hiring these classified employees.

To ensure that investigations proceed in a timely manner and that the district disciplines employees promptly, the district should increase its oversight of open allegations of employee abuse against students.

To ensure that it does not duplicate efforts and that its information is complete, the district should identify one division to maintain a districtwide tracking mechanism for settlements that includes the total amounts paid and descriptions of the misconduct.

Encouraging the Legislature to create a system that tracks classified employees charged with misconduct involving students, as the Commission on Teacher Credentialing does for teachers, is one of four recommendations in the report.

“If such a mechanism existed, school districts throughout the State could be notified before hiring these classified employees,” wrote State Auditor Elaine Howle.

Under state law, hourly or “classified” workers at a school district have fewer due process rights. Efforts to dismiss them for misconduct take less time, and generally are less expensive than dismissals of teachers and administrators. The school board has final say for classified workers. Teachers can take an appeal to an outside authority, the Commission on Professional Competence. Source: California State Auditor (click to enlarge).

Classified employees don’t have the same due process rights as teachers facing charges of misconduct. The process of dismissal is quicker, with fewer steps, and is therefore less costly, leading some critics of the appeals process for teachers to call for a uniform system for all school employees.

As with teachers, in most cases classified employees charged with misconduct involving a student will be suspended with pay and have the right to a hearing. But the local school board has the final say over whether to dismiss classified staff, a process that takes at most four months. Teachers can appeal decisions to a quasi-judicial Commission of Professional Competence, often extending the process up to 18 months, during which they continue to be paid. That’s costing LA Unified $1.4 million a month in salaries for those teachers, according to the LA Daily News. The district said yesterday it spent an additional $11 million last year to pay substitute teachers to fill in for the suspended teachers. LAUSD paid former Miramonte teacher Berndt $40,000 not to contest his dismissal.

The audit found that the district’s handling of Berndt’s case wasn’t an anomaly. LAUSD was at least one year late in submitting more than 144 cases to the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing, including 31 cases that languished for three years before being reported. The district couldn’t say why this happened.

Being late creates damage beyond the financial burden on the district and limbo for the accused teachers. The statute of limitations on these abuse cases is four years, so delays could prevent the Commission from revoking certification from a teacher who might be guilty of the accusations.

Superintendent John Deasy acknowledged the problems in a six-page letter to Howle responding to the audit. “We gladly and respectfully accept all of the recommendations presented in this audit,” wrote Deasy. He then described the policy and structural changes made by the district over the past year that led the district to submit about 600 cases in a period of three months to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Among those were the 144 late filings, about 100 duplicates of reports that had already been sent in and, according to the audit, “many not requiring reporting” that “caused a significant needless increase in workload for the commission.”

Warren Fletcher, president of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), said that action illustrates the district’s overreaction to handling abuse charges in the aftermath of Miramonte. “Every time the district overreacts it diverts resources that should have been used to investigate serious misconduct,” said Fletcher in a statement released Thursday. “From accuse no one to accuse everyone. Neither of them makes sense.”

Although it wasn’t recommended by the auditor, Deasy wants the Legislature to try again to pass a bill making it easier to suspend teachers accused of child abuse. After a bruising battle, the state Assembly defeated a similar bill last year. SB 1530 by Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat from the San Fernando Valley, would have made it easier to suspend a teacher facing “serious and egregious” charges without pay. It also would have replaced an appeals board with an administrative judge whose opinions would have been advisory to the school board. LAUSD said it is working with Sen. Padilla on that legislation.

UTLA opposed last year’s bill, but Fletcher wouldn’t say what position the union would take on a new version. However, he did indicate what they’re looking for from the district. “Being a teacher is a sacred trust. Teachers above all want to make sure that anyone who has violated that trust is gone,” he said. “But we are not going to accomplish that by scatter shot approaches and smearing innocent people’s names.”

Audit finds the school district failed to promptly inform California panel about the allegations, including sexual ones.

Angry parents yell at one another in frustration in front of Miramonte Elementary - , Los Angeles Times

November 29, 2012, 7:09 p.m. :: Los Angeles school officials failed to promptly report nearly 150 cases of suspected teacher misconduct — including allegations of sexual contact with students — to state authorities as required by law, an audit released Thursday concluded.

The findings come 10 months after the Los Angeles Unified School District was rocked by the arrest of a teacher at Miramonte Elementary School for allegedly spoon-feeding semen to students in a classroom.

At the time, district officials acknowledged that they did not swiftly send all serious misconduct allegations to the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, which keeps a database that school systems use to verify teaching licenses.

The audit found that L.A. Unified submitted at least 144 cases of alleged teacher misconduct more than a year later than required, 31 of them more than three years late.

As a result, the commission was unable to "determine promptly whether it was appropriate to revoke the teachers' certificates and thus prevent the individuals from working in other school districts," according to the report.

In one case, the district reported an alleged sexual relationship between a teacher and a student in March — 3 1/2 years after the teacher left the district over the incident, the audit said. The "lack of timely reporting" prevented the commission from taking steps to keep the teacher from working elsewhere.

A Times investigation earlier this year examined another case in which L.A. Unified failed to report allegations against a former teacher who was later hired by another district.

During five years as a frequent substitute teacher, George Hernandez was investigated by police three times over allegations of sexual misconduct involving students. L.A. Unified did not report Hernandez to the state commission, and Hernandez subsequently became a substitute in the Inglewood Unified School District for nearly three years, through August 2010.

He now faces charges in connection with allegedly molesting a student in a classroom.

L.A. Unified officials said Thursday that they agreed with the audit's findings and that they have already addressed the issues raised.

The audit "captured accurately what the district has done in terms of improvement and where the district was," L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy said Thursday. He said he was "thankful and appreciative for the honesty and accuracy" of the audit.

Officials admitted they had not promptly alerted the credentialing panel about an investigation into allegations that Mark Berndt, the Miramonte teacher, had allegedly taken dozens of photos of students, some gagged, others being fed tainted cookies. Previous reports of questionable behavior by Berndt had failed to result in any discipline before his arrest.

Berndt is charged with 23 counts of lewd conduct and is being held in lieu of $23-million bail. He has pleaded not guilty.

After his arrest in January, the nation's second-largest school system reviewed old files for evidence of other potential problem employees, submitted 600 records from the last four years to state regulators, and pledged to inform parents within 72 hours when an employee is removed from a school during an investigation into sexual misconduct. The district also improved its system of tracking misconduct allegations.

The audit, which examined six schools and selected misconduct allegations from 2007 to the present, also found that the district acted too slowly internally.

One example was an eight-month delay between the conclusion of an investigation and "the date on which the school's principal issued a memo to the employee about the incident, with no indication of anything occurring in the interim," auditors wrote. "According to district staff, the principal struggled to write the memo."

Other delays were blamed on poor past procedures and staff reductions because of budget cuts.

Deasy ordered the massive filing as a precaution, and also directed principals and other staff to find and review documentation going back decades. This extensive review has not resulted in any current staff being disciplined or removed from work pending further investigation, Deasy said.

Reports to the commission include suspected sexual molestation and such other misconduct as drug use, hitting a student, abusive language or cheating on standardized tests. Districts must report to the panel within 30 days when conduct results in a suspension of at least 10 days or a change in job status, such as a resignation or retirement. Sex or drug abuse charges involving minors must be reported within 10 days.

The audit was conducted by the California state auditor at the behest of the state Legislature's audit committee, which is chaired by Assemblyman Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens).

The audit exposed "some appalling information," said Lara, whose district includes Miramonte in the Florence-Firestone area.

Teachers union President Warren Fletcher said Thursday that he shares the district's goal of making student safety paramount, but he faulted Deasy, for example, for replacing the entire Miramonte staff from February through the end of the school year. The superintendent said he had done so to restore public confidence in the school. The teachers returned this fall, clear of any wrongdoing.

"The district's response has been characterized by wild swings, between previous administrative failures of supervision, followed by extreme overreaction, such as the removal of 85 innocent teachers from Miramonte for over six months," Fletcher said. "Every time the district overreacts it diverts resources that should have been used to investigate serious misconduct," said the United Teachers Los Angeles president.

Since the Miramonte case broke, an employee accused of a misdeed is typically pulled quickly from a school and "housed" in an office while the case is resolved. In mid-November there were 298 "housed" employees. Before Berndt's arrest, there were about 160.

By September, the district had paid $3 million in salaries to 20 employees whom the district has kept off campus the longest, including one employee removed for 4 1/2 years.

On average, these employees are in limbo for 127 days, the district said. The cost to replace a teacher with a substitute is either $173 or $274 a day depending on whether the substitute is working day to day or for a longer period.

If a substitute works enough days to qualify for benefits, the cost is about an additional $100 a day, according to L.A. Unified.

Not all delays are the fault of L.A. Unified, which can't begin its own probe without clearance from law enforcement, auditors said.

The audit also faulted the state for having no mechanism to report non-teaching employees to a central agency. In L.A. Unified about 12% of those facing misconduct allegations have been employees other than teachers.

One such notable case also occurred at Miramonte.

In 2005, aide Ricardo Guevara was found guilty of lewd acts with children and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. Previous allegations against Guevara had not resulted in his dismissal.

In the Berndt case, 126 students and 63 parents have filed claims for damages against L.A. Unified. There are also two lawsuits on behalf of 33 students and one involving 11 parents.

Miramonte Elementary School, in the unincorporated Florence-Firestone area, was the site of a sexual abuse scandal. LAUSD's practices related to to child abuse were the subject of critical state audit released Thursday.

L.A. Unified Superintendent John Deasy said the district has already moved to address the recommendations in a state audit critical of how it reports and investigates allegations of child abuse. Responding to a state audit that found delays in L.A. Unified ...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles Unified School District frequently failed to report teacher misconduct to state credentialing authorities and took too long to investigate and punish teachers, according to a report by the California state auditor released ...

State auditors concluded Thursday that LAUSD officials acted slow to allegations of employee sexual misconduct and failed to notify the teacher credential's agency of such act, which is required by law. The review was orders after a long-time teacher at ...

LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Unified School District frequently failed to report teacher misconduct to state credentialing authorities and took too long to investigate and punish teachers, according to a report by the California state auditor released ...

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Results of a report about how the Los Angeles Unified School District handles teacher misconduct claims were released Thursday. The California State Auditor's Office looked into how the district and schools respond once the claim ...

By CHRISTINA HOAG Associated Press, from the San Jose Mercury News http://bit.ly/TtShVC

11/29/2012 10:19:10 AM PST/Updated: 11/29/2012 12:19:49 PM PST :: LOS ANGELES—The Los Angeles Unified School District frequently failed to report teacher misconduct to state credentialing authorities and took too long to investigate and punish teachers, according to a report by the California state auditor released Thursday.

The 57-page audit made four main recommendations to the nation's second-largest school district. But it noted that state laws governing teacher dismissal contribute to the problem of prolonged investigations and expense in firing teachers.

Superintendent John Deasy said the district already has addressed the deficiencies outlined in the audit.

"We completely agree and more," he said.

The audit was sparked by a case earlier this year in which a former South Los Angeles third-grade teacher was arrested on lewdness charges over allegations he fed students semen-laced cookies over several years. Mark Berndt has pleaded not guilty.

The case attracted international headlines and prompted numerous teacher sexual abuse cases across the state.

It also drew attention to how the district handles complaints of teacher misconduct and discipline when it emerged that students had complained years before about Berndt's alleged behavior, but no action was taken.

It was also revealed that the district never had reported his case to the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing, as required by state law. Additionally, the district had to pay Berndt $40,000 to retire rather than go through a lengthy dismissal process.

Deasy said the district has taken numerous steps to tighten procedures since then. It has formed new employee investigation unit to expedite cases, revamped teacher misconduct reporting procedures to require multiple layers of review so cases will not go overlooked, and adopted a 72-hour parental notification policy when teachers are accused of misconduct.

Additionally, it has stepped up teacher and parent training in signs of child sex abuse and implemented a district-wide tracking system to monitor disciplinary actions against employees.

Although the state audit said that laws made firing teachers a labyrinthine process, it noted several cases where district officials simply failed to act. In one case, it took a principal eight months to write a memo to an employee after an abuse investigation was concluded.

It also noted that the district pays the salaries of teachers under investigation even though they are not working in a classroom, a status known as being "housed."

The audit said that as of mid-September, the district had paid $3 million in salaries to 20 non-working teachers accused of misconduct with students. One such case has dragged on for more than four years, the audit said.

Deasy said teachers are housed an average of 127 days and the district is moving more aggressively to fire them. In the 2011-2012 school year, 96 teachers were fired for misconduct, up from 63 the previous year. It costs an average $300,000 to dismiss a teacher.

It currently has 298 teachers being housed, 54 of whom are not being paid.

Warren Fletcher, president of teachers union United Teachers Los Angeles, did not have an immediate statement on the report, a spokeswoman said.

Deasy said the school board will be advocating efforts to change teacher dismissal laws, especially in cases of sexual misconduct, although one previous bill was defeated earlier this year.

The audit also recommended the Legislature create a statewide tracking system of dismissed school support employees, such as custodians and cafeteria workers, to prevent their rehiring by other districts.

Additional coverage | 1pm 11/29

... ANGELES — California's state auditor has criticized the Los Angeles Unified School District for failing to report some 150 cases of teacher misconduct to state credentialing authorities and for taking too long to investigate allegations of teacher malfeasance.

The review, released Thursday, was conducted by the California state auditor at the behest of the Legislature's audit committee. It was commissioned in response to fallout from the arrest of a veteran Miramonte Elementary School teacher on 23 counts of lewd ...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles Unified School District frequently failed to report teacher misconduct to state credentialing authorities and took too long to investigate and punish teachers, according to a report by the California state auditor released ...

The California State Auditor's Office looked into how the district and schools respond once the claim is filed. The audit looked at six sample schools in the district to see if they were following procedures. The audit was requested after two teachers from ...

REPORT 2012-103 SUMMARY - NOVEMBER 2012

Los Angeles Unified School District: It Could Do More to Improve Its Handling of Child Abuse Allegations

HIGHLIGHTS

Our review of the Los Angeles Unified School District's (district) handling of allegations of employee abuse against students highlighted the following:

The district often did not properly notify the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (commission) when required to do so. After reviewing past practices, the district reported about 600 cases to the commission in a span of three months.

At least 144 of these cases—including cases involving employee misconduct against students—were submitted a year or more late.

Of the 144 cases, 31 were more than three years late when reported to the commission.

There is no statewide mechanism to communicate among school districts when a classified employee at any school district separates by dismissal, resignation, or settlement during the course of an investigation involving misconduct with students.

Although it appears the district generally followed state law when reporting suspected child abuse and generally followed its policies, it did not always act in a timely manner on some allegations during the investigation process—one case did not move forward for almost 14 of the more than 18 months the case was open.

The district could not adequately explain some delays in disciplining or dismissing certain employees suspected of child abuse—we noted an eight-month delay in one case between the time the district's investigations unit issued a report concerning the allegation and when the principal took action.

The district paid $3 million in salaries to 20 employees whom the district has housed—relocated away from school sites—the longest for allegations of misconduct against students, including one employee who has been housed for 4.5 years.

RESULTS IN BRIEF

In terms of student enrollment, the Los Angeles Unified School District (district) is the largest school district in California. During the 2011-12 school year, it was responsible for 659,246 enrolled kindergarten through 12th-grade (K-12) students receiving educational instruction at 759 school sites and 198 charter schools. The district employed approximately 27,000 certificated K-12 classroom teachers and more than 4,600 substitute teachers. Additionally, it employed more than 5,100 teacher assistants who do not hold a certificate to teach from the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (commission). The district also employed nearly 30,400 classified employees, who are not required to have a teaching certificate, in positions such as campus aide, food service worker, and clerk. Because most students attending district schools are under the age of 18, employee misconduct against students generally entails child abuse. Examples of child abuse include physical abuse and sexual abuse or exploitation.

State law requires that school employees report suspected child abuse immediately or as soon as practically possible by calling a law enforcement entity and filing a suspected child abuse report within 36 hours. District policies have detailed reporting and investigative processes for allegations of suspected child abuse, including allegations of employee abuse against students.

Moreover, state regulations require school districts to report to the commission within 30 days cases of a certificated employee's change of employment status, such as a dismissal or other termination, as a result of an allegation of misconduct or while an allegation of misconduct is pending. Further, state law requires the commission be notified within 10 days when a certificated employee is put on a compulsory leave of absence because of charges for certain sex offenses or controlled substance crimes. However, the district often did not properly notify the commission when required to do so, such as when employees were dismissed while allegations of misconduct were pending. The district did not realize it had failed to report many of these cases until a high-profile incident that went unreported for more than six months led the district to review its past reporting practices. The commission uses these reports to review an employee's case and to suspend or revoke his or her teaching credential if necessary.

The superintendent of schools directed district officials and principals to undertake two separate projects intended to improve district reporting processes. One of the projects—the commission reporting project—led to about 600 cases being reported to the commission in a span of three months. However, this large increase in the number of cases reported included many not requiring reporting and caused a needless increase in workload for the commission. Our review of the information the district provided to the commission found that the district failed to report as required at least 144 cases—including cases involving employee misconduct against students—and they were submitted a year or more late when the district finally did report them. Of the 144 cases, 31 were more than three years late when they were reported to the commission. This lack of reporting resulted from systematic problems within the district, such as inconsistent office processes. As a result of the delays in reporting these cases, the commission was not able to determine promptly whether it was appropriate to revoke the teachers' certificates and thus prevent the individuals from working in other school districts. The district has yet to complete the second project, which involves a review of employee files by school principals, and the district will not know the project's full effect until all files are reviewed by its central office and it determines how many cases were investigated and whether disciplinary actions were taken.

Further, California has no statewide mechanism to communicate among school districts when a classified employee at any school district separates by dismissal, resignation, or settlement during the course of an investigation involving misconduct with students. Thus, a classified employee who has separated from his or her district might be able to find employment with other school districts without those school districts knowing the circumstances under which the employee left a previous position.

The district has made improvements to its policies and procedures related to reporting, investigating, and tracking suspected child abuse over time. For example, the district implemented two tracking systems that allow improved reporting and tracking of suspected child abuse and created a unit that investigates complex cases of suspected child abuse. In addition, although independent charter schools are largely autonomous and are not required to follow the district's policies and procedures regarding child abuse reporting, the information we reviewed at two charter management organizations indicated that adequate processes are in place to report child abuse. District-required charter language also obligates charter schools to inform the district about notices of investigations by outside regulatory agencies, lawsuits, or other formal complaints within one week of the school's receipt of such notices.

Available documentation related to our review of 24 personnel files containing child abuse allegations indicate that the district generally followed state law when reporting suspected child abuse and generally followed its own policies and procedures related to investigating child abuse allegations and to removing a suspected employee from a school site after an allegation was reported. However, we found that the district did not always act in a timely manner on some allegations during the investigation process. Although a criminal investigation conducted by law enforcement might cause the district to delay or put on hold an administrative investigation by the district, we found some delays in the investigation process that the district was unable to justify. For example, until the district's investigations unit took it, one case we reviewed did not move forward for almost 14 of the more than 18 months that it was open. The local district was unable to explain what occurred during that 14-month time period.

In addition, the district follows a progressive discipline process and state laws related to dismissing employees, both of which increase the time for the district to see a case to its conclusion. Nonetheless, for cases we reviewed, the district could not adequately explain some delays in disciplining or dismissing certain employees suspected of child abuse. For example, in one case, we noted an eight-month delay between the time that the district's investigations unit released a report concerning a child abuse allegation and the date on which the school's principal issued a memo to the employee about the incident, with no indication of anything occurring in the interim. According to district staff, the principal struggled to write the memo.

The district is responsible for keeping an employee who is being investigated for misconduct away from the school site during the investigation. The district's policy for addressing this responsibility is to house the employee—to relocate him or her away from its school sites. Since its creation in 2008, a database that tracks housed employees reports that the district has housed more than 700 employees for various reasons. The length of time that the employee is housed can range from a day to years, depending on the time it takes to make a determination on the case. During this time, the district continues paying the employee's salary. In fact, as of mid-September 2012, the district had paid $3 million in salaries to 20 employees whom the district had housed the longest for allegations of misconduct against students, including one employee who has been housed for 4.5 years.

Our review found that the length of time and the expense of the process for dismissing the district's certificated employees suspected of child abuse contribute to the district's entering into settlement agreements rather than continuing with attempts to dismiss the employees. State law outlines the dismissal process that must be used for certificated and classified employees. The dismissal of classified employees and substitute teachers is effective immediately, regardless of whether the employees challenge the district's decisions. In contrast, the process for dismissing certificated employees is more lengthy and expensive for the district. Certificated employees who appeal their dismissals are each entitled to a hearing before the Commission of Professional Competence. As a result, the district may decide to reach a settlement agreement with certificated employees rather than attempt to continue with this lengthy process. The district has made some efforts to track settlement agreements; however, none of its tracking efforts provides the total cost of the settlement or complete information on the nature of the misconduct. Having one division within the district maintain a districtwide tracking mechanism for issued settlements could ensure that the district has complete and readily accessible information. We believe this information could help the district identify and analyze patterns and trends associated with providing settlements, which could help streamline and make the process less expensive.

RECOMMENDATIONS

To ensure that the commission is made aware of certificated employees who need to be reviewed to determine whether the employees' teaching credentials should be suspended or revoked, the district should adhere to state requirements for reporting cases to the commission.

The Legislature should consider establishing a mechanism to monitor classified employees who have separated from a school district by dismissal, resignation, or settlement during the course of an investigation for misconduct involving students, similar to the oversight provided by the commission for certificated employees. If such a mechanism existed, school districts throughout the State could be notified before hiring these classified employees.

To ensure that investigations proceed in a timely manner and that the district disciplines employees promptly, the district should increase its oversight of open allegations of employee abuse against students.

To ensure that it does not duplicate efforts and that its information is complete, the district should identify one division to maintain a districtwide tracking mechanism for settlements that includes the total amounts paid and descriptions of the misconduct.

AGENCY COMMENTS

The district agreed with our recommendations and outlined the steps it has taken or plans to take to implement the recommendations we directed to it.